ES / EN
Leonardo Padura Fuentes

Leonardo Padura Fuentes

Cooperatives face new tests

One style patented by the current Cuban government is to practice the trial and error strategy, as a cautious move towards a possible outcome. Of course, this method has a very long-standing use of scientific research and is, for example, one of the more often dramatic maneuvers in detective novels: you try with a suspect and, if not successful, that road of inquiries is closed and you start another. But, a society like the Cuban, urged of economic solutions, doesn’t always have the open time of a scientific laboratory or freely selected pages of a thriller to subdue many of its changes to the extended trial and error strategy. Recently, applying that strategy again, the Cuban government has approved "experimentally" the constitution of 124 non-agricultural cooperatives, which will be devoted mainly to operate in the services (not only gastronomic), construction, transport and manufacture of materials for various purposes, including housing itself, a critical sector if any. These entities, that may have varying degrees of relationship to the economic, productive or state infrastructure (premises, equipment, etc.) are essentially independent and governed by its own rules and mechanisms, different from those that prevail in the state sector of the country. Just weeks...